Guild Wars 2

Be forewarned that this is a very long post. These are just my opinions. I have tried to offer constructive commentary and propose 6 recommendations,

It is an attempt at proposing changes to the new Desert Borderland (DB) map and to some elements of WvW related gameplay. I believe these changes would achieve the following;
a) encourage strategic decision making
b) strengthen the feeling of investment in a map which encourages scouting and defense
c) provide greater opportunity for player vs. player engagement at all scales

Desert Borderland Map

The challenges the new map presents are;
a) increased pathing options when navigating from A to B leading to a feeling of isolation with reduced chance of small scale encounters
b) increased path lengths when navigating between locations increasing the response time to hot-spots on the map
c) the lack of waypoints which both increases map traversal (predictive and reactive) time and impedes defensive play
d) objectives with no strategic meaning lowering the maps offensive and defensive value

Map design is resource (and hence cost) intensive, so any recommended changes should be of such a scale as to remain practical from an implementation perspective.

Recommendation 1

All four towers on the DB map have limited strategic value. In particular the north east (NE) and north west (NW) towers have no effect on game play apart from their contribution to PPT. In the Alpine Borderland (AB) maps the NW and NE towers posed a direct threat to Garrison if held by the enemy, or presented an opportunity for capping Garrison depending on your perspective. In addition, the south west tower in the AB map presented the same dynamic with respect to Bay. This created many opportunities for player vs. player encounters from the small to the large scale. This is missing in the new DB map.

In figure 1. a high resolution map of the new DB map is presented. Based on the range of a trebuchet (10,000 units) I have identified three positions (labelled A, B and C in yellow on the map with a range circle centred) from which the Main (central), Fire and Air keeps can be attacked. Re-positioning the towers would be too impractical so I want to introduce the concept of an Outpost.

http://i.imgur.com/YIGHi3e.jpg
Figure 1. Desert Borderland Map. Showing proposed Outposts locations with Trebuchet ranges and associated destructible keep walls.

Outposts are located at positions A, B, C and D in the map. Each Outpost is affiliated with its closest tower and is incorporated into the structural upgrade path (see my Upgrade System recommendations). Pre-upgrade the outposts are ruins, so this is the state immediately after a tower is flipped. The effect of the Outpost upgrade is to repair it. The Outpost upgrades inline with a towers structural upgrade. Cap the tower and the Outpost returns to a ruined state. The purpose of each outpost is to provide opportunities for scouting and offensive sieging against keeps. The towers now present a vicarious threat to the keeps through their outposts, the only way to remove that threat is to cap the associated towers.

With regard to implementation they are a simple model with a small footprint. Reuse of existing GW2 assets would minimize this change. Two formats come to mind – either a single tower or a small walled enclosure. A platform, single destructible gate and supply depot. Something along the lines of Klovan or Bravost without the lords room extension, these are approximately 1800 units square and their scale on the DB map are indicated. For offensive sieging against keeps, modifications to the south east Main keep corner walls and the Air keep wall to the west of the north gate need to be made destructible

Recommendation 2

Your home borderland is just that, it is your home. By definition in your home you should have a defensive advantage. Waypoints provide exactly that. On a map the scale of the DB map this is more important than ever before. Waypoints facilitate quick movement around a map enabling effective scouting , defensive play-styles and access to the more open areas for guild oriented fighting .

To this end, waypoints need to be instated in the Fire and Air keeps and removed from the southern towers. The southern towers are already convenient to the enemy spawns and combined with the fact that home players can’t use these waypoints means there is little, if any, advantage in keeping these waypoints. These waypoints should be removed. I have indicated on the DB map those waypoints that need removing by a red cross, and the positions of the waypoints in each of the keeps (see figure 1).

On a minor note the waypoint in the Main keep (central north of the DB map) seems inconveniently placed. In my opinion this waypoint would be better placed to the north of the Keep Lords platform. This would enhance the defensive advantage of your main home keep, that is, allowing players to quickly get back into the fight when the keep needs contesting. The position of the waypoints can be seen in figures 2, 3 and 4.

http://i.imgur.com/vm7jPBe.png
Figure 2. Main (central north) Keep Waypoint Location

http://i.imgur.com/UFWWFph.png
Figure 3. Fire Keep Waypoint Location

http://i.imgur.com/gXfPAMC.png
Figure 4. Air Keep Waypoint Location

Waypoints should not support blobbing by large zergs on a map, and so a cap on the number of players than can use a waypoint over a given interval may help to split up large groups. This functionality is similar to that employed for mesmer portals where a limit of 20 players is placed. I would suggest a limit of 30 to 40 players being allowed to use a waypoint over a 2.5 minute interval. An exception to this would be the spawn waypoint.

Recommendation 3

Remove the Oasis Event (OE) from the centre of the DB map. The effect of this event which spawns every 3 hours is to enable the more organised (and usually larger) force to severely weaken all enemy owned objectives. The old breakout event favored that server being at a disadvantage, which is how these events should work. Events such as the OE only foster an easy win and wxp/karma orientation; which diminishes any strategy and tactical approaches to WvW game play.

This event should be replaced with a ‘King of Hill’ type of scenario where players must cap and then hold the area (not like the ruin bloodlust event where you only had to hold for a short period of time). Holding this area results in a boon being applied to all held objectives, such as, 10% increased healing or similar. Maybe, someone else can come up with a better idea here.

Upgrade System

Devolving players power from making choices and introducing automated upgrades has a negative impact on gameplay. Manual upgrades provide an emotional connection where players have invested time and resource; they have been involved in strategic decision making that can have wide ranging effect. It is this investment that is at the root of driving a sense of ownership and hence, defensive play. This encourages players to come to the DB map.

Recommendation 4

Return all upgrades to be manually driven and supply based as in the AB map. Deciding which upgrades to run, how much supply was available versus how much was required, whether enough camps were owned and what upgrades they had; these were all central to scouting and defensive gameplay. Disrupting this flow was central to roaming and havoc groups.

I suggest a hybrid approach to funding upgrades. Players have complained about the upgrade cost in the past, but I believe that this lies at the heart of the feeling of investment. The hybrid upgrade process should be driven by a cost based on a combination of Badges of Honor and gold. This lowers the overall gold cost without removing it altogether.

Recommendation 5

Restructure the upgrades. The upgrade paths introduced with HoT are over simplified and offer no opportunity for choice to effect the outcome. I suggest the keep and tower upgrades are regrouped into “Defensive” and “Structural” paths (similar but not identical to the old upgrades). The paths have three tiers (as in the AB system) each consisting of an upgrade pair, that can be considered as major and minor upgrade. The major item is based on the path type, and the minor item a personnel upgrade. This pairing avoids the mistakes of the past where miss-timed upgrades could frustrate players needs. I have attached new dialogs describing keep, tower and camp upgrades; see figures 5, 6 and 7. To support the supply driven upgrade model the camp upgrades have reinstated increased supply delivery.

http://i.imgur.com/gGvTtBL.png
Figure 5. Camp Upgrades

http://i.imgur.com/qOQDwc5.png
Figure 6. Tower Upgrades

http://i.imgur.com/2CoD3SV.png
Figure 7. Keep Upgrades

Guild Halls

Guild Halls through the War Room and associated WvW upgrades can have the effect of alienating the smaller guilds and frustrating the larger guilds. Placing all WvW upgrades behind the HoT expansion has removed gameplay that was previously available and purchased under the core game title. The considerable costs, both material and time gated, associated with the guild WvW upgrades have removed gameplay from WvW that was pre-existing and now must be re-earned. So there are two outcomes, a loss of rights and a loss of content.

Recommendation 6

Separate the pre-Hot guild upgrades from Guild Halls and make these available to all players. A player can start a guild but should not be obliged to go down the Guild Hall path to access these core upgrades. Upgrades could be managed through the guild dialog with a tab similar to the guild initiative representative npc upgrades. The upgrades should be applied through the guild claiming npc at each objective, as they were before. In addition, I would remove the Tactivators (one for each tier of tactics which just looks like a kludge) and incorporate these into the npc dialog as well.

Guilds no longer earn influence as an upgrade currency, so this can be traded for favor (time gated via a LA npc) or converted to resonance. Currently, resonance is used to speed up the research queue. Implementing a currency for these non-HoT gated upgrades would possibly need to based on favor. However, the earning of favor would need to supported outside of completing guild missions and the influence gating removed.

All “WvW Guild Claiming” upgrades (camp, tower, keep, sm) should be under a single upgrade and made available outside of the Guild Halls. Scribing: Packed Dolyaks that give double supply capacity should be removed inline with the upgrade changes outlined previously. Scribing: Guild “Siege” should be made available outside of HoT. Among the Objective Aura upgrades “Supply Capacity” similarly should be available outside of HoT. The Objective Aura upgrades “Power”, “Vilatilty, “Precision”, “Toughness” appear to be all +100 to the stat which is quite higher than previous which IIRC was +40. This could be implemented in two levels, the lower available outside of HoT.

End Note

If you have read this far thank you. Well that’s it. I hope this makes sense and that someone from Anet reads this. WvW was the staple of my day, and since HoT I just don’t have the desire to play anymore. I made this post in the hope that it strikes a nerve with the players and summarises some of what could change WvW for the better. I am sure there are other things that could be tweaked and if you can think of any then please add to this post.